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Review of the Week–Mission Impossible: Fallout

There is definitely a such thing as a franchise being taken too far–Pirates of the Caribbean and The Fast and the Furious are just a couple of the myriad examples that spring to mind. But it seems that others just get better with age. That’s at least what in my experience has happened with the Mission: Impossible movies, but how does the most recent (and if word is to be believed, the final) installment stack up? Let’s take a look at Mission Impossible: Fallout.

In this sixth Mission: Impossible movie, IMF agent Ethan Hunt once again steps up to save the world after a terrorist group called The Apostles (the remains of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation‘s Syndicate) steals three plutonium cores out from under him in a mission gone wrong. Faced with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, Hunt, along with his usual-suspect gang of fellow IMF operatives and joined by CIA assassin August Walker and the ever-mysterious Ilsa Faust, is forced to join forces with former Syndicate head Solomon Lane to stop the plot. But with the rest of the CIA suspicious of his motives and members of the team hiding their own agendas, Hunt finds his past colliding with the present as everything he cares about is put on the line in what looks to be his final battle.

Billed as the pinnacle of the Mission: Impossible series, Fallout certainly doesn’t disappoint in the action department. From skydiving from 20,000 feet to what seems like an endless car chase/gun fight through London and even a helicopter duel in the mountains of Kashmir, this movie keeps you on the edge of your seat until the clock runs out–literally. There’s plenty of the standard Mission: Impossible fare we’re all familiar with at this point, with death-defying courage, brilliant gadgetry and planning, and just a hint of dumb luck factoring into almost all the admittedly amusing and thrilling action sequences. At almost two and a half hours long, I never once looked at my watch–although I will admit it was exhausting. If nothing else, Fallout definitely won’t bore you. Some have called it the best action movie of all time–personally, Mad Max: Fury Road still takes the cake for me, but this one’s pretty up there, too.

In addition, Fallout goes to great pains to connect all five movies before it in constructing a narrative of Ethan Hunt’s devotion to saving the world from itself, and whether or not his duty is misplaced. While the movie is pretty much a direct sequel to Rogue Nation (in my opinion by far the best Mission: Impossible film), there’s a ton of call-outs to everything from the very first movie to Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Mission Impossible 3. All in all, things get tied up pretty nicely. Mainstay characters like Benji Dunn and Luther Stickell return in fine form, as always, though the absence of Jeremy Renner’s Brandt did sting a bit, and of course the relative newcomer Ilsa, played by Rebecca Ferguson, turns in another great performance. In Brandt’s place we got Henry Cavil as Walker, an implacable, stone-faced tank of a man whose total dedication to his mission and shoot first, ask questions later attitude conflicts directly with Hunt’s focus on the well-being of his people. I’ve never been a huge Henry Cavil fan, but he’s passable here simply because he looks imposing and doesn’t say much–although he does serve as a reality check to the film, poking fun at all the IMF’s ridiculous schemes like masks and whatnot. I sort of wish Sean Harris’s Lane had a bigger part in this movie after being such a great villain in Rogue Nation, but what he does contribute is again fantastic. Now there’s a guy who’s plenty menacing.

As for franchise star Tom Cruise, he still doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all even after six movies, and still manages to convincingly portray Hunt as a man who’s willing to do whatever it takes to save the world, but isn’t willing to sacrifice the people he cares about to do it. I mean, let’s be honest: you kind of have to take the fact that the things that happen in Mission: Impossible are completely ludicrous and move past that to really enjoy them. Nowhere was that more apparent than in Fallout, where the characters repeatedly admit to making things up as they go along. There was even a fair amount of really convincing pathos in Luther’s choked-up explanation of Ethan’s past, Ilsa and Hunt’s mutual but unacknowledged attraction, and the reappearance of Hunt’s former wife Julia at the climax of the film as she helps her ex-husband save the day one more time and tells him about how he’s made her a better person–plus the bad guys’ quest to remake the world in a way that they think will be better than the messy, chaotic status quo. It’s all pretty much here.

I will say, though, that the decision to reveal Walker as the double-agent and true villain of the film was kind of heavy-handed and immensely predictable. I mean, gee wiz, who would’ve thought that the sole new face on the team would end up being the faceless mystery villain? Um, me. And how it was so telegraphed not even halfway into the film with Walker lying to his CIA boss about what happened was way too obvious for me. It would have been a lot more effective had things waited until closer to the end for that turn to happen–or better yet, get rid of John Lark and just make Solomon Lane the villain again. What’s wrong with that? Also, the White Widow’s character, while interesting and definitely entertaining, was strange and felt incredibly convenient and out of place in the film when you look at everything else going on.

My only other complaint about Fallout is that, while I did thoroughly enjoy it, it just didn’t quite reach the heights of pure entertainment joy as Rogue Nation did. In this installment, the writers were clearly going for a story with a little more weight and meaning to it, and it’s reflected in the darker, heavier tone of the movie. While I don’t think this was a detriment–quite the opposite, in fact–it lead to me just not having as much fun with this one. But it’s still easier better than a lot of the previous installments, including Ghost Protocol–say what you want about that movie, but in the end its plot makes very little sense. Speaking of which, though–how the hell did Ethan Hunt and the IMF get so totally played by the Apostles in the beginning? Everyone abandoning the plutonium and going straight to help Luther–especially when they knew he was bullet-proof!–seemed like total amateur hour to me and a mistake that these professional agents would never have let happen. So the premise of the entire movie seemed a stretch of credibility, and if you look at it that way, maybe the entire movie shouldn’t even have happened. But I digress.

My Rating: 8/10

Mission Impossible: Fallout isn’t the best Mission: Impossible movie, but it’s definitely second-best in my book, and that still makes for a fine movie. If this is indeed to be the end of the franchise in its current form, the cast and crew succeeded in sending it out with a pulse-pounding bang that combined humor, heart, and nonstop action in what was overall a pretty convincing if imperfect package. That’s good enough for me, folks.